EDITORIAL: GW Faces Reality: Age of Sigmar Grows Up
It’s been a rough 9 months for Age of Sigmar, but it may just have a bright future ahead of it.
You may not have heard the news, but Age of Sigmar is growing up. Just yesterday, GW officially put this up on thier Facebook page:
Followed up by this information:
“As of this summer, you’ll have your pick of 3 great ways to play Warhammer Age of Sigmar. We couldn’t be more excited, and we’re certain you’ll love it too.
We’ll have more details for you soon. For now:
Open Play is probably the most similar to the way you play now, but there are new rules on the way to give you even more freedom, including the option for huge multi-player battles.
Narrative Play is as you’d expect – recreating the great stories and epic encounters from the Age of Sigmar. To help you forge your own stories within the Mortal Realms, there are also some really cool campaign rules and tools on the way as well.
AdvertisementFinally, Matched Play is something we know a lot of you have been keen to see. We’ve put these rules together in association with some of the world’s biggest tournament organisers, to create a new standard for balanced competitive play. And yes, it includes points values.”
That sound you hear is Nottingham throwing in the towel in the face of market reality. What we have seen over the last year is one of the largest retailing experiments in the tabletop industry since perhaps Wizards of the Coast’s great D&D d20SRD experiment.
For years now, there have been pronouncements from GW that they are not a “game” company at all. Instead they are a “model” company and it is the top of industry quality of their models that pulls in the customers. These customers are wowed by the wondrous amazing worlds of GW. They become hooked for life by their ever growing miniatures collections, never to look again on the crude, brutish products of competitors. According to the theory the games you play with these models (Warhammer 40,000, Warhammer Fantasy, Age of Sigmar) are completely secondary and largely irrelevant.
At a recent investor’s meeting the following was reported being said by GW senior management:
“…The company’s attitude towards customers is as clinical as its attitude towards staff. If you don’t like what it’s selling. You’re not a customer. The company believes only a fraction of the population are potential hobbyists, and it’s not interested in the others.
Advertisement…I’m told that the word “Game” in Games Workshop encourages the misconception that games are its business, but that only about 20% of Games Workshop’s customers are gamers. The rest are modellers and collectors. Maybe half of them think about playing now and then. The other half have no intention. People actually walk into the stores because they’re curious about modelling fantastic armies.”
Now of course this entire philosophy was never put to the hard test of reality – until Age of Sigmar.
Here we saw GW put all thier chips on the table.
- First: we saw the “Funny – longest mustache” rules PDFs released to the public.
- Second: we saw the 4-page rules that accompanied the initial boxed set.
- Third: the slow but steady 9 months of releases, from 2015’s Stormcast Eternal and Khorne ranges, to this year’s Chaos, Fyreslayers, and Orruks.
Everyone agrees on one thing – Age of Sigmar has beautiful miniatures. Standouts like Archaon and the Varangard show what GW can make at the top of thier form.
Don’t hate us because we’re beautiful!
What far fewer people talk about is the dead-cat bounce the game has had since that first fateful weekend in early July of last year.
EVERY retailer BoLS has reached out to across North America, from sea to shining sea tells the same story that goes roughly like this:
- There was a strong burst of interest for the games first few weeks (July 2015), followed by a dropoff to virtually nothing.
- Retailers report only grudgingly carrying the game, and stock the bare minimums to keep thier GW accounts.
- When products move, it is as often as not to support other game systems such as Kings of War that the majority of gamers have moved onto.
- Isolated FLGS who have really put effort into growing the Age of Sigmar community report a small stable community, but nothing at all compared to the big boys such as 40K, Warmachine, and X-wing.
Perhaps things are different around the globe, but in North America, things have not been looking good for the 8 Realms – at all.
Age of Sigmar was a roll of the dice.
A game perfectly designed to confirm GW’s belief that rules don’t matter – only models do…
It didn’t.
Now this summer comes the re-tuning. As we have said before, there is nothing wrong with Age of Sigmar that GW couldn’t easily fix – it was always just a matter of them wanting to fix the issue. Apparently 9 months was enough for them to begin to right the listing ship of Age of Sigmar. We have been hearing for over 2 months from sources that some type of structured play was coming – that GW knew the game had serious issues and was going to address them. This summer it arrives.
We still don’t know what exact form it will entail, but GW has already admitted points are involved. An AoS supplemental book of some type with sections for the three styles of play seems most likely. The new systems of play come out this summer – so roughly 1 year after Age of Sigmar launched. If there is anything GW can do, it’s knock out rules with thier eye’s shut. Age of Sigmar is built upon a strong (if compact) rules core. The four new Grand Alliance warscroll compilations are done. The dozens of undesired SKUs and ranges from old Warhammer Fantasy have been cut and discontinued.
In short Age of Sigmar has put it’s past and WFB baggage behind it and is poised for success. It is still a very, very young system. Take a look at what Warhammer Fantasy looked like when it one year old and tell me that Age of Sigmar doesn’t blow it away… With a strong model catalogue, the full force of GW behind it, and a determination to make corrections based on market realities – the only thing missing was a strong ruleset to promote structured play.
We won’t have long to wait now.
Godspeed Age of Sigmar – may you have a clear skies ahead!
~Age of Sigmar is dead – Long Live Age of Sigmar (with points)!
